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The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will conduct a separate investigation into the alleged “wrong encounter” between agents of the Philippine Drug Control Agency (PDEA) and anti-drug agents of the Philippine National Police (PNP) who left three dead and several more. wounded Wednesday night.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said he has instructed the NBI to intervene despite the creation of a joint PNP-PDEA Board of Investigation (BOI) into the shooting in a parking lot outside the Ever Gotesco shopping center in Quezon. City.
Both the PNP and PDEA gave assurances Thursday that those responsible for the shooting will be brought to justice.
“We are calling on the public to allow us to complete the investigation,” said PNP spokesman Brig. General Ildebrandi Usana at a press conference attended by senior officials, including the head of the PNP, General Debold Sinas, and the director general of the PDEA, Wilkins Villanueva.
“Criminal and administrative charges will be filed at the end of the investigation,” Usana added, when Sinas revealed that the PNP and PDEA were conducting a BOI and joint investigation.
Sinas and Villanueva did not give details about the anti-drug operations that resulted in the deaths of two policemen, a PDEA agent and a civilian informant.
A policeman and three PDEA officers were also injured.
“We cannot give anything. As a step. How it started and how it escalated. That is the focus of the investigation, ”Villanueva said, to avoid anticipating the investigation.
“It is very crude to make a statement about what happened. Who is doing the buy-bust? We don’t have the evidence [yet]”Villanueva said.
“We will not anticipate the investigation. If we have the real image, it will have it, ”Sinas told reporters.
Autopsies were being performed on the bodies; the firearms of those involved in the shooting are being subjected to ballistic examinations and forensic examinations were being carried out, including on the mobile phones of the agents and policemen involved.
Senate Hearing; Role of NBI
This was how it unfolded when the head of the Senate Public Order Commission, Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, said that he will also open a separate investigation on Tuesday, March 2.
Meanwhile, Guevarra said that NBI’s work is “separate and distinct from the investigation to be carried out by an ad hoc PNP-PDEA Joint Investigation Board by PNP chief Debold Sinas.”
The director of the National Capital Regional Police Office, Major General Vicente Danao, said PDEA agents and the Quezon City Police District Drug Control Unit were conducting legitimate operations when the shooting broke out. .
Initial reports showed that QCPD’s District Special Operations Unit (DSOU) launched a buy and sell operation, unaware that they were dealing with PDEA’s Special Enforcement Service (SES) agents.
However, PDEA spokesman Derrick Carreon said his agents were also in a legitimate operation against illegal drugs in the same area.
